A Good Thursday

Heh. I played around in Undead Strat (Baron Strat to some of you) and got the Rune of the Argent Dawn finally. Woot for a boost in spellpower fighting Undead! Coupled with a Blessed Wizard Oil, I was finally able to get a 1000-point non-crit Mind Blast.

Afterwards I joined the guild to continue in Blackwing Lair. Our motto some weeks seems to be, "We'll wipe on Vael and trash mobs, but one-shot drakes!" We took down the Broodlord and the first drake, and I won the Bracers of Arcane Accuracy which made me very happy.

Overall we did very well. I felt bad at one point when one of the mages I was watching died during AOE because a tank died and I got freaked out, and later because I managed to kill myself in the cubby while healing for the drake because I didn't handle the tank transition properly. I'm sure that as I raid more and more I'll get more confident. Until then I can say, "Maybe my unorthodox thinking helped save the raid and let all 39 of them continue without dying to success!"

I really didn't expect to get the Bracers of Arcane Accuracy -- I'm guessing that the other damage casters have better Tier 2 stuff available -- but now I'm back at negative 10 DKP. I'm also stuck with the Mark of Remulos from working towards the Rockfury Bracers I won't need anymore, but the Logistics Badges will probably now be applied towards a Wrath of Cenarius.

I know! Let's push a patch during prime time!

So, Blizzard kinda screwed up last night and pushed a patch to fix a soft lock issue during prime time last night, making it difficult-to-impossible for some people to login. When I was finally able to logon after watching an extremely weak card of Ultimate Fighting on Spike, a bunch of people had given up for the night, but the guild was starting an AQ20 raid.

I wasn't too keen on joining up. The Rajaxx encounter takes a while to complete, and if you fail, there's a fifteen minute wait for the NPCs to respawn before you can try again. Mess up twice, and you've pretty much wasted an evening. I do like the free CC rep, but there's only one item I want that I can really roll on left in the instance. The robes aren't enough of an upgrade for me to roll on, and TONS of people want the Eye of Moam for its +spell damage.

But, I'm a priest, so I had to capitulate and join up.

A quick note: I'm really bitter that there's no new rank of Shadow Word Pain book in AQ20. Most raiding priests downrank their heal spells, so there's absolutely no excitement from books for me. Well, except for Prayer of Healing, which I tend to overuse.

We rolled through Rajaxx without any problems, but wiped three times before killing Moam. I think we just got our wires crossed so far as banishing the adds and healing the 'Locks.

After that the raid disbanded, and I was too tired to do any grinding. I sent one arcane crystal and four Dark Iron ore to the guild bank, and called it a night.

Tuesday Raiding

Our guild had a reasonably productive Tuesday. We started out with an Onyxia run where I picked up the Halo of Transcendence, and hit up Blackwing Lair for Razorgore and Vael before calling it a night.

I wasn't especially keen on getting the Halo, since it isn't too much better for me as a Shadow Priest than the Circlet of Prophecy. If I remember correctly, it costs me about 12 damage and only adds 30 healing, 2 spirit, and 10 frost protection. It's a concession to the needs of raiding, really -- I tend to spend a lot of time in BWL outside of shadowform. So to be an effective healer I'll need to work up to the 3/8 Transcendence bonus, 15% mana regeneration while casting that stacks with Meditation (another 15% regen while casting.)

I probably also need to get into the habit of buying a lot more Major Mana Potions. Speccing shadow means I have a shallower mana pool to begin with than the other healers, regardless of whether I'm doing damage or healing and trying to keep shadow weaving up I tend to bottom out and having pots at the ready is better than begging for an innervate.

I'm getting better at keeping Shadow Weaving up using Shadow Word: Pain rank 1 when I'm not doing damage. The new feature where you can see the health and mana of your target's target helps some, in the Vael fight it was also me getting into a groove of shielding a caster or myself, throwing a prayer of healing, then putting a couple of shadows on instead of trying to get all five at once.

Ossi Bad, Rep Good

Last night we made yet another haphazard run at Ossirian in AQ20. No luck. I think everyone was thinking, "Hey, we've cleared to Ossi already, it's going to reset tomorrow, let's pound on him and get the phat lewts." But Monday is a horrible night for the server performance-wise, and people seemed to need more time to rest and relax after playing all weekend.

Afterwards, I made a circuit through Un'Goro since I was in the area. It's a nice place to farm -- you can get Essences of Earth and Guardian Stones from the Guardians, Living Essence from the Tar People, and now Savage Fronds for AD tokens from the Lashers.

Then I joined up with some folks for a quick Field Duty run in Silithus since they were claiming Blizzard changed it back so that you would get Cenarion Circle rep every time you complete it. I didn't have high hopes that it would work for me since I've made it up to Revered, but I was VERY pleasantly surprised to discover that you do indeed get 25 rep per completion!

I'm tempted to set aside a few hours to just run back and forth this weekend doing Field Duty and see if I can get close to Exalted, but I've got 16,000 rep to go = 640 Field Duties... I'll probably just work on collecting 25 Argent Dawn Valor Tokens so I can get the Chromatic Mantle of the Dawn, then split my time between working on Rockfury Bracers and the Talisman of Ascendence when I'm not raiding.

I'm really hoping, though, that the prices for Savage Fronds, Cores of Elements, etc. start to drop. Most people are selling them for 1g per, with the occassional seller trying to sell quickly at 50s per (but not in bulk). My feeling is that 600g-1000g is a reasonable price to pay to "buy" an epic, whether it's buying it outright, cobbling together materials, or buying quest turnins.

At Exalted with the Argent Dawn, it takes 27 Insignia of the Dawn and 27 Insignia of the Crusade for an epic. Each of the 54 insignia requires 30 drops for a total of 1,620.

So, paying 50s a drop on the Auction House isn't a horrible rate... but if the supply gets glutted to the point where they're going for 25s each or less I'll be thrilled and buy them as fast as I can.

An Introduction

Hi everyone!

I started WoW around Patch 1.4 playing only at a friend's house and an internet cafe. Pretty soon I bought my own account, and a computer powerful enough to let me play from home.

I got my generic Night Elf Hunter up to Level 60 in the days before the Hunter Love Patch and when anti-hunter sentiment was still high -- people were still saying "LF2M NO HUNTER" in the city channels.

With mostly green gear and no Beaststalker, I decided to switch to a new PvP server and roll an Undead Shadow Priest.

I had only gotten to Level 20 or so when Hurricane Katrina hit my hometown. While evacuated and staying with my little brother in another city, I managed to spend wayyyy to much time WoWing and got to Level 60 in a great guild.

After things settled down in Real Life I returned home for a while, then moved to another state for a new job since my old place of work shut down.

In the game I tend to be more of a grinder/explorer than a raider -- I've gotten Exalted with the Timbermaw Hold, Alterac, and the Argent Dawn -- but our guild is on the later stages of BWL and I hope to be around when Nef falls.